Environmental Impact
An important topic since recent years has been the impact of the software industry on the climate. As the industry is responsible for an approximately 2-4% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. These are for example produced from large datacentres who are able to host the cloud. In addition, inefficient code can cause more processing power, increasing the amount of energy that is being used. This can add up if a program is on 10 million computers.
Despite this limitation of software, open-software presents an innovative mitigation strategy. Through collaboration with other programmers, these programs can be optimized. As the the main cause is as mentioned energy consumption this can be reduced by optimizing these systems, through a collaboration and working together.
In addition to open software offering a solution to inefficient systems, (open) research software also offer ways to improve research on climate change with tools such as OpenStreetMap that offers an open source resource to aid in research in climate research.
Lastly, with the circulare economic principles becoming increasingly more important, reusability of software and its products is essential. As building something that is FAIR, means that electronic waste will be reduced and the lifecycle of the product will increase.
Thus, while challenges remain in the area of sustainable software development, creating a framework to create the minimum of responsible (open) research software is essential.